Currently, the majority of pedestrian accidents are cited in many traffic accidents. Such pedestrian accidents may lead to deaths, serious injuries, and the like.
In particular, since the visual field for driving significantly decreases at night, a case in which a driver does not detect a pedestrian frequently occurs. To prevent this, presently, researches on a method for providing a view so that a driver may secure the visual field using a sensor such as a near infrared ray (IR) camera or a far IR camera and a night vision system for detecting a pedestrian at night and alerting a driver of the detected pedestrian in advance through a night pedestrian detection are being conducted.
In addition, research on protecting a pedestrian is being actively conducted. For example, there is an advance driver assistance system (ADAS) for preventing a pedestrian accident through a configuration of detecting the pedestrian in advance and alerting a driver of the detected pedestrian or controlling a vehicle to brake.
Honda Motor Corporation has adopted a method for performing binarization using a characteristic that a gray level of a pedestrian appears to be high in an IR camera to extract a pedestrian candidate. However, this method may segment an area by comparing a gray level of a pixel to a peripheral average brightness value; however, there was an issue that a candidate selection error occurs due to image noise.
General Motors (GM) determines a confidence level based on vigilance information and motion information of a pedestrian and detects the pedestrian based on the determined confidence level. A pedestrian detection method using such motion analysis needs to analyze a direction of a motion having occurred over the entire area due to a motion of a camera itself in a case of a vehicle. Accordingly, a relatively long processing time is used. Also, when a pedestrian is motionless, accuracy decreases.